All NGE and SKU characters belong to their respective owners.
Summary: He felt like he had to strangle her then, because no way should her pale skin be growing dark from right underneath his fingertips.
http://archiveofourown.org/works/548356
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8650175/1/World-End-s-Messiah
http://forums.ohtori.nu/viewtopic.php?id=3248
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/13327/World-Ends-Messiah-NGE-SKU-post-series-both-series/
All NGE and SKU characters belong to their respective owners.
It took Ikari Shinji a long time to return to the world; and by then, what he could see was but its’ wrecked remains.
Everyone was gone, of course, with the vast sea of LCL splashing against the shore now holding testimony to the dreary state of humanity.
“Everyone should die.”
Indeed, that was his wish as the epitome of Instrumentality, thus why this outcome . . . no; Rei was the epitome; he, he himself was simply the one whose wish she helped realize, out of her sisterly . . . or perhaps, motherly devotion to him.
“Everything will be alright . . .”
Head heavy with thoughts of his mother forever disappearing off into space in Unit 01, condemned to an eternity of solitude, Shinji struggled to move his stiff, sore neck as he tried looking around. There was the giant’s face, halved in its fall yet still distinctively identical to Rei’s. The Mass Production Units now lined the barren landscape in their “crucifix poses”, making the entire open space resemble a vast cemetery. There was a crimson gash opened upon the glittery night sky . . . or was it really a trail of stratospheric blood?
Yes, the sun, the moon, and the earth obviously still existed just like his mother had said . . . but what good were they for one left to tread this bleak wasteland alone?
Slackened, his head rolled the other side, thus allowing him to see that he was not really alone.
“Asuka . . .”
It was indeed the pilot of the fallen Unit 02, the fiery devil girl who hurt and surprised him all the time in their other life, back before Instrumentality. With her left eye patched up and her right arm bandaged, she looked very much like how he had imagined she’d look after the Mass Production Units had basically devoured her Eva . . . but wait; in that case, shouldn’t the girl be even more . . . maimed than she looked here?
In the distance, framed by Asuka’s plugsuit-wrapped curves, was the apparition (just an apparition; not her person, not real) of the uniform-wearing Rei standing upon the LCL sea; her lips were moving, her often vapid expression now urgent, but he heard not a word she tried saying to him . . . nor did he cared, as he knew that this water-standing Rei was no more real than the halved-giant head marring the horizon. Broken, bandaged Asuka . . . she was real.
Willing strength back into his numb limbs, Shinji pushed himself up from the soft, moist sand, and reached out towards Asuka – the only “real” person left to ease his loneliness upon this broken, desolate earth.
“Asuka . . .”
Her un-patched eye opened at the touch of his finger upon her cheek, only to stare through him and up into nothingness. Straddling the girl now, Shinji started lightly slapping the girl, insisting that she face and address him.
“Asuka . . . Asuka! Asuk-”
And just like that, the boy’s persistent, nagging words ceased, as he actually found himself stunned into imbecility by what he now saw (that, after all that he had been forced to witness throughout the nightmarish battle and the eerie Instrumentality coming after it).
It all started with Asuka’s one revealed eye – originally blue as sapphire, it suddenly started changing shades. At first, Shinji thought it was a merely trick of the light, before he saw how her hair and skin was starting to change too.
One of the very first impressions Asuka had made on Shinji was that offensive rudeness aside, she truly was an extraordinarily beautiful girl. Having a mix of Caucasian and Asian genes, the girl possessed red tresses and fair complexion that made her positively stood out here in Tokyo-3.
Those red tresses now were quickly lightening up into platinum pink, as her once fair complexion came to deepen like cocoa-stained milk . . .
Driven past reason, past sanity, the boy let out a gurgling sound from within his dry throat; body moving before coherent thoughts did, he found his hands already clasped around that chocolate-brown throat, as he then clamped down with the desperate violence of a struggling mantis; he felt like he had to strangle her then, because no way should her pale skin be growing dark from right underneath his fingertips.
Olive-toned face (so beautiful, perhaps even more so than it ever was before) growing taut as he squeezed at her neck, the changed Asuka’s now emerald green right eye gradually regained focus, as it now seemingly stared straight into his soul, such that he knew she now was reading every jumbled thought currently running through his frantic mind.
Her now dark hand, bandaged to the palm, clasped his face with such tender delicacy, that the boy thought the touch was exquisite beyond anything he had since experienced in his short, miserable existence; fingers loosing strength, eyes blurring up, the fourteen-year-old then cried like broken, abandoned child he really still could not help but be, no matter what kind of grand responsibilities his world had been forcing upon him
“I don’t feel good . . .” Shinji heard the girl mutter, before he got softly pushed off of her. Standing up in a rather . . . tentative manner (not unlike that of an insect having freshly shed its old shell), the pink-haired, dark-skinned girl that Asuka Langley Soryu become walked up to the edge of the waves upon unsteady feet, and studied the amber sea with her head hung low. “So, even you got trapped in this, after all.” Her voice lowered, in genuine grief seeping with apparent venom. “Oh, little sister, unto what lows will you sink just to stay together with that foolish life form?”
“A-Asuka . . . ?” Shinji walked up towards her in small, uncertain steps (all the while hating the tremor in his voice). “What are you talking about?”
At that, Asuka turned to face him, and her smile was the pacifying smile of a worldly, purposeful adult. “Oh, nothing. I’m merely thinking about how Hikari and Toji would fare bodiless within that LCL sea . . . those were your little friends’ names, right?”
Shinji’s jaw dropped at the girl’s peculiar words (made stranger still by her now mature tone). “Wha . . .?”
“Sorry, my memory has been all jumbled up since the bout with those white beasts. My head still hurts . . .” swooning, she drifted sideways like a frail flower, and was quickly kept from falling by the boy’s steadying arms.
“Asuka! Careful . . .” Shinji’s words trailed off as the girl – much to his shock - leaned into his embrace with a sinuous deftness that would make even Misato seem wooden in comparison. “Asuka . . .”
“Take good care of me, Shinji,” urged the girl now looking up to him, “you’re now the only one I’ve got . . . my only prince.”
“Yeah . . .” young head fogged up by arousal (thus unable to focus upon what alarming signals his mind was trying to warn him with), Shinji put on a brave smile as he held the dark girl to his side in a gallant, possessive manner. “Yeah! I’ll definitely protect you and keep you safe, Asuka!” Sinking deeper into bliss, the boy could not help but think that had his housemate been so agreeable from the start, then maybe, just maybe he would have had the drive to save the world from destruction like everybody wanted him to do. As it was, he and the girl now were, essentially, the new Adam and Eve left to this people-less world . . . one that he just might survive, with the new and improved Asuka supporting him my his side.
There was an LCL tidal pool accumulated right beside their feet, such that had the boy glanced down upon it, he would no doubt be shocked by what was revealed there.
It was said that mirrors do not lie, and apparently the same applied to an LCL medium’s smooth surface
The amber-tinted reflection showed a scrawny youth hugging to himself not any delicate lass, but rather, a white-haired, darkly handsome man garbed immaculately in white, princely attire; towering over the hazy-eyed boy by more than a foot, the adult glanced down upon him like a falcon at a chick.
“I’ve . . . learned things during Instrumentality, you see,” purred “Asuka” at the now bewitched boy. “There’s a way to make everybody come back, and into a world vastly superior to what it was before. It involves the finding of ‘the Light of the World’, a precious power since stolen by a witch and her consort.” The hypnotic sweetness of her voice belied her increasingly shrewd words. “It is now up to us to hunt the two down, and take from them the power that is rightfully ours.”
“Power . . .” murmured Shinji. Again, he noticed a pale maiden in a school uniform standing some distance off to their side; by her pointing finger (directed at Asuka) and her wide open mouth, she must had been screaming something dire at him; yet, he heard not a word the pale maiden said, nor did he cared . . . as familiar though she might look, he simply could not recall her name, nor whatever past they might have had together. Besides, why heed this stranger, when he had the only woman he had ever wanted right here with him?
Said woman was currently beaming at him while gesturing into the opposite direction, where the Shinji saw a grand cluttering of cathedral-like buildings surrounding a tall tower – pre-Second-Impact style buildings that he had never noticed before in this area.
“Those school buildings look intact, let us seek shelter there. There will be food, and drinks, dorm rooms to sleep in, and with luck, other children similarly off Instrumentality as ourselves; we can recuperate there, gain what allies we need, then act anew. Come, Shinji-kun,” Asuka reached a hand out to the boy. “Let us together save this sickly world; together, we shall right mankind’s failed evolution, and bring for them a miraculous, eternal, revolution.”
“Revolution . . .”
“Come, fellow prince.”
Taking the dark, elegant hand, the boy with the power to decide humanity’s fate let himself get dragged along towards the pristine school buildings existing impossibly amidst the surrounding wreckage, towards the ends of his new world.
To Be Continued . . . ?
Notes: I can’t believe I’m churning this out while falling behind schedule on both Seinen Kakumei Utena and The 120 Days of Ohtori (IRG Forum project). This fic takes on two notable “mysteries” from NGE and SKU, respectively – Shinji’s strangling Asuka at the end of EoE, and the big reveal that Anthy (and thus possibly also Akio) can change both gender and appearance in Ep 23 – and combined them together into the “what if” premise of this crossover work.
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